


You'll Wake Up

by SilentTaboo



Category: Night at the Museum (2006 2009)
Genre: Ahkmenrah Comforts, Dead Larry, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Museum's First Real Death, Not nearly as depressing as it sounds, Zombie-ish Larry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3616524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentTaboo/pseuds/SilentTaboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Larry didn't think he was going to die this way. Teddy believed before then that he could handle death. Ahkmenrah steps up to be a leader, and the museum is thrown into utter chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Difference Red Makes

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for any sporadic thinking on Larry's part. It's really only going to show up when he's panicking or bleeding.

You’ll Wake Up

By, SilentTaboo

(I apologize for the broken thought process Larry goes through at the beginning. But, hey, if you were bleeding to death, I don’t think you would be too stuck on one thought either.)

Chapter 1:

He had to get to the museum. It was the only thought he could get past the blinding pain that encompassed his body.

The mu-ssse-umm. The mus-eeeuuum. The mmm-museum. Larry thought rolling around the sound of the word in his head. It sounded funny to him now—almost comical.

It really was an odd string of sounds.

Some small part of his brain was panicking at the dull almost drugged sense the rest of him seemed to have. It was really a bad sign that he couldn’t maintain a straight line of thought. He HAD to get to the mmm-musss-eummm. They would know what to do.

At least, he figured they would. After all, most of them had dealt with this amount of blood in their lifetime, right? And it really was a lot of blood.

Larry swayed slightly as he stumbled around the last block and gave an irritated glare at the stairs to the entrance. They seemed to wave in his vision as it darkened slightly around the edges, taunting him. They knew he would have to all but crawl up them to get the door. Now they insisted on moving just to make it harder.

Had Ahkmenrah extended the power of his tablet to the stairs now? Larry hadn’t remembered them being this mean before. It took him three tries to figure out that clutching the railing in what used to be a tight grip was his best bet. The tack of blood under his hand made his grip slippery, and the red left streaks on the silver steel, but slowly, and with many pauses for air that refused to stay in his lungs or be anything but frigid and thick, he made it up the fifteen stairs without any major slip ups.

He had a strong urge to face the moving stairs and stick his tongue out, but he had to do something… what was it again? Oh! Museum. He had to get inside. He was pretty sure the sun was down now. Either that or his vision had darkened more after the long climb. He seriously hoped it was the former.

The reasonable, still sane part of his blood deprived brain pointed out that he probably wouldn’t last much longer if he had to wait any longer for aid. His legs shook as his knees knocked together in agreement.

He NEEDED to get inside NOW.

Nnn—ooww. Huh. That was a funny word too. Nothing at all like mmm—ussse—uummm, but funny in its own right.

_Inside, idiot! Inside, now!_

He didn’t actually remember entering the building. It just sort of happened. The next thing he actually remembered was Teddy snapping his fingers in front of his face as he called to Attila to get Ahkmenrah.

“Lawrence, Lawrence, look at me.” Suddenly that seemed like a difficult task in the dim light of the lobby. A hand cupped under his chin to help him along. “What happened to you? Do you know?”

Larry thought hard; it seemed so long ago now. Hmm. Oh, yeah! The guy with the gun. His stupid decision that maybe he could handle the mugger with his flashlight if he got him distracted long enough. The sharp pain and the spreading red just under his ribs.

An almost inaudible, “shh-shhhhot” was all he could answer with.

Larry had been unaware that the string of profanity that fell from the good president’s lips was even in his vocabulary. His legs decided to exhibit their shock by giving out a moment after.

The string of profanity grew louder more colorful as Teddy tried to slow his decent to the stone tiled floor. “AHKMENRAH!” Teddy yelled as he lowered Larry’s head to the ground.

He proceeded to pull up Larry’s once blue soaked dress shirt to get inspect the source of all the blood.

Good. Larry thought, maybe Teddy could get the pain to stop.

Teddy proceeded to press on the wound after taking off his gloves, and Larry decided that pain relief might just be a talent outside of Teddy’s reach. Larry heard himself let out a pitiful cross between a whimper and a sob as his vision went from mostly black to a blinding hot white.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay Lawrence.” Larry wasn’t so sure.

A long string of Egyptian words announced Ahkmenrah’s arrival. “We need to move him. That ground can’t be comfortable.”

“And take him where? He’s bleeding too much to take him to the employee’s lounge. He’ll bleed over everything, and if I think what’s going to happen to him happens, then we don’t want anyone searching for him here. None of us will be awake during the day to stop them from taking him. We can’t take him to any of the other exhibits for the same reason. Blood is not something that is generally overlooked.”

Larry briefly thought that Teddy’s voice wavered, for a moment before he started trying to decipher what he thought was going to happen.Honestly, most of Larry had no idea. The rest of him wished he didn’t know.

There was silence for a moment before Ahkmenrah answered. “We can take him to my exhibit. There isn’t much cloth there, so anything he bleeds on we can wipe off before sunrise. We need to hurry though. I do not believe he will make it even that long, and I am quite sure we would all prefer it not happen on the floor.”

What were they talking about? _Death_. A small part of him thought. _I’m dying_.  
 


	2. Reassurances from a Leader

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys you have Timesquadgirl to thank for this chapter. I really needed the motivation. I give all of my readers permission to comment or bug me if they think I'm taking too long to update. ;)

Ahkmenrah could remember all of the people he had watched die before. His mother, his father, several of his siblings. He could even remember dying himself at the hand of his older brother. Handling death, whether your own death or someone else’s, never got any easier.

It was painful, full of fake smiles and brave faces, accompanied by desperation and a crippling sadness. Being Pharaoh had meant never letting anyone see him cry, and he often wondered if it was really worth the trade. Looking down at the Guardian of Brooklyn as he shook with pain and a cold that only came with blood loss, after four thousand years he still did not know the answer.

The knowledge that his tablet could bring Larry back the next night brought almost no comfort to him. Larry had a family and a life during day hours. Larry was used to surviving outside of the museum. He could never see the sun again, and seeing Nicky again was definitely something that needed to be given a lot of thought. Nicky was young, and people might start getting suspicious if the boy started making frequent midnight visits to the museum.

They had gotten Larry to the Egyptology exhibit what felt like hours ago, but was probably only thirty minutes. Teddy, after helping Ahkmenrah put Larry in a spare sarcophagus lined with the contents of the lost and found, having been hit with the gravity of the situation, could not remain in the same room as Larry. He had only managed to get out broken apologies to the Pharaoh, to Larry, to anyone that would listen, as he left the room.

Honestly, Ahkmenrah could not blame him. All of the exhibits, except for him, had never been truly alive. They had pseudo-memories of living, of seeing the sun, of joys they never personally experienced, and of deaths they knew nothing off. For the museum, Larry was the first death any of them had truly experienced, and any fake death they remembered was nothing compared to the real thing.

That had left Ahkmenrah to force the fake smile and brave face for Larry’s benefit. It forced Ahkmenrah, a four-thousand-year-eighteen-year-old, to watch and wait as Larry suffered. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have traded it for anything. He remembered rather vividly what dying alone felt like, and he wouldn’t wish that on Larry.

“I never thought I’d die this way.” Said a whisper of a voice to his left, tearing Ahkmenrah out of his rather morbid thoughts.

“How did you think you would die?” Ahkmenrah asked genuinely curious.

“Old, in a hospital somewhere, Nicky nearby. Thought I’d have more time. I don’t want to leave Nick, Ahk.” Ahkmenrah grabbed the other man’s shoulder gently.

“I know, Larry.”

“What if I don’t wake up? I don’t want to leave, Ahk, I really don’t.” Ahkmenrah knew Larry was exhausted, otherwise, he didn’t think the man would allow himself to voice his fears.

“Shh, Larry. I have been waking up every night for the last four thousand years. Even if you die here tonight, you will wake back up here tomorrow at night fall. You’ll wake up again, I promise.”

“But—“

“You will wake up.” He sternly insisted.

Larry looked at the Pharaoh, his vision hazy, and decided he could understand why he had been chosen to rule a country. The certainty in Ahkmenrah’s face drove out most of his fear, leaving a gnawing nervousness in the pit of his stomach. He could feel the exhaustion creeping up and devouring his other emotions. The pain he had been feeling before was dissolving into a numb throb, and everything felt heavy, especially his head.

He gave a whimper as he tried to fight the sleep that he knew was going to claim him soon; he really didn’t want to die. Nicky still needed him. He hadn’t been there for his son too often in his young life, and now it looked like he wouldn’t be able to be there for him at all as he grew up. What about the museum? Had they not shown him how much they needed him to protect them at the Battle of the Smithsonian? What if Ahkmenrah was wrong and he didn’t wake up the next night, and they hired a new night guard that locked everyone back up at night or worse? Ahkmenrah had developed a case of claustrophobia from the last 50 years in that box. Could the Pharaoh, even with the tablet, survive anymore if that became his existence again?

Ahkmenrah leaned his head on the edge of the sarcophagus as he watched Larry try to fight off what they knew was the inevitable. “It’s all right.” Ahkmenrah whispered, reaching out a hand to prevent Larry from shifting and causing his body more pain, “You can go to sleep, Larry. We’ll all still be here tomorrow, you’ll see.”

Ahkmenrah’s forced smile slid from his face as Larry’s eyes closed and he slowly stopped breathing. “Until tomorrow, my friend.”

Ahkmenrah sat there a moment more staring at the pale face of the night guard. Then it was time to get busy again. He was sure it wasn’t too much longer before sunrise, and without Larry, he needed to make sure everyone got back in their places in time. There was also the blood in the lobby to clean up and he was sure there was some in front of the museum as well. If the day dwellers discovered that, they might search the museum for Larry. He had promised the man he would wake up the next night, and he wouldn’t if his corpse was discovered and moved during day light hours. As much as he hated doing it to the man after his reaction earlier, he needed to find Teddy.

The night rest of the night moved on fairly quickly as Teddy moved from horrified to shocked exhibits making sure everything was where it should be, in between hysterical murmurs of his own. Ahkmenrah did his best to clean up the blood and finished what felt like five minutes from sunrise. He still needed to get back to his own exhibit, close up Larry’s sarcophagus, and get inside his own.

When that all was finished, and only he was lying in his own sarcophagus did he allow himself to feel the full force of what had just occurred. He sincerely hoped he would be able to keep his promise. As long as no one found Larry during the day, hopefully he would wake up. With that last thought, he felt the magic leave him, and he was still.


End file.
